two newbie questions about mods

[PerpetualNewbie]

I've been playing SEIV against the computer for the Last year or so, and am finally getting around to trying out mods (and trying out making my own). I read the tutorial (very useful), but I'm left with a couple of questions...

1) How well does the AI take into accound mods. For instance (not necessarily a real example), if I require Physics level 3 to make a battleCruiser, will the AI take that into account or will it just never make battlecruisers? If I use someone's mod which adds a number of new ships, will the AI try to make them?

2) How do you adjust the research costs used in the game start...I'd like to make the expensive research costs more expensive, but can't find a value in the Data/settings.txt file.

Thanks,
Perpet

[Suicide Junkie]

1) You will have to modify the race_AI_research.txt for each AI in order to get them to research techs in the new proper order.
These files are found in pictures\races\racename.

2) The research costs are found in TechArea.txt, in the data folder.

[Atrocities]

A better way if you want to play with research cost is to make a new facility, one that generates more research points for you. The AI won't use it unless you mod them. That takes time, but its well worth the effort.

Modding your own game is a lot of fun. You can blow an entire night easily just messing around with the files learning them, and changing them.

It can be a challenged, but there are a lot of excellent resources out there. Fyrons Modding Tutorial site, is a great place to start.

If you want to add a lot of flare to your current games, just combine a couple of mods like Fyrons Quadrant mod and say Proportions. That should really get you into a game of epic proportions.

[capnq]

TDM-ModPack doesn't change any tech, but vastly improves the AIs.

Many of the quadrant mods help the AIs by reducing the number of systems that the AIs don't deal with well, such as black holes. The AIs actually perform far better in my own Hypermaze mod than I ever expected them to.

[PerpetualNewbie]

Thanks, that works . I see what is meant when its said that modding is alot of fun; its pretty addictive once you get started. I've spent more time today modding than playing (still very simple things, but I'm slowly catching on), and have been having a bLast.